Just call John Hickenlooper the Silver Foxhttp://www.hcn.org/articles/just-call-john-hickenlooper-the-silver-fox
John Hickenlooper, the recently re-elected (by a whisker) governor of Colorado, should be called the new “silver fox” for his work on water sharing, in memory of Delphus Carpenter, who earned that title back in 1922. That year, Carpenter cajoled seven Western states into signing the historic agreement that divvied up the Colorado River.

Hickenlooper was certainly wily as a fox when he brokered a difficult deal this summer between the oil and gas industry and Colorado Democratic Rep. Jared Polis. Hickenlooper got Polis to back down from his campaign to put anti-fracking legislation on the ballot, and created a bipartisan commission to work out tougher fracking rules. Hickenlooper avoided a messy political battle while also spurring a fracking pact and developing a first-ever statewide water plan. It was the kind of thing Delphus Carpenter might have done.

Hickenlooper did something revolutionary when he signed a water plan for the entire state, and now, what he calls regional round tables are working hard to find ways to turn the plan into action. Early results show that some water providers east of the Rockies might agree to stop their destructive “buy up and dry up” programs on the state’s Western Slope. At the same time, stakeholders are working on water-conservation ideas, since we’re expecting a shortfall of a half-million acre-feet within the next decade.

This is not just a Colorado plan, because it offers relief to hard-pressed states downstream. That's important, of course, because water in much of the West begins in Colorado. If we can put more water into rivers that feed into the Colorado River, neighbors as far away as the Sea of Cortez will benefit. It will certainly help states like California, now ravaged by terrible drought.

When Delphus Carpenter, the first “silver fox of the Rockies,” got seven states to agree on how to share a river, he put a stop to legal water battles that were just beginning to get bitter and expensive. The compact wasn't perfect, organized as it was during some of the wettest years in recent history. And increasing drought continues to dim and challenge its assumptions. Changing realities over time will also affect the new Colorado water plan, as well as the oil and gas pact.

Meanwhile, stakeholders have been asked to do something that is not in their natures. The oil and gas industry is seriously looking at ways to interfere less with local communities, which means that it’s talking beyond the mineral rights to which it’s entitled. The same is true with the water plan. Instead of trying to divert existing water for more supply in their own basin, the assembled landowners, water utilities and others are talking about ways to deal with shortages. They're talking about how much water they can save and how to help the whole state have water. Interstate water compacts are at the table as well, because these obligations don’t go away.

Hickenlooper is responding to many obvious factors, such as the big drought of 2004-’05, and especially to the frightening predictions that Colorado, like the rest of the West, is soon going to be at “peak water” yield. Peak yield will happen when the water resource is giving us absolutely everything it can give. Hickenlooper’s also responding to the political facts about oil and gas development. Fracking may not be popular, but it’s also a $30 billion industry.

I've never served on an oil and gas commission, but I have served on one of those water roundtables. I've seen how hard it is to look beyond the immediate water needs of “our” basin. It's also tough to preach moderation and quality of life to oil and gas drillers. How did this new “silver fox” do it?

Hickenlooper played what baseball managers call “little ball.” He didn’t hit for the fences, but made one little move at a time. He apparently aimed to be successful with just one person at a time. He is inclusive, he listens, and he’s persuasive: I still have the little silver water pin he once gave me.

Delphus Carpenter did the same thing. He urged representatives from the seven states that rely on the Colorado River to come together at Bishop's Lodge near Santa Fe 92 years ago. The basic compact they signed back then still holds. Years ago, Carpenter gave all the credit for the deal to President Herbert Hoover. Hickenlooper does much the same thing with his “aw shucks, it wasn't me” attitude. If that doesn’t sound like a Silver Fox, I don’t know what does.

Forrest Whitman is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a column service of High Country News. He lives close to the Continental Divide of Colorado.

]]>No publisherWriters on the Range2014/11/13 01:00:00 GMT-6ArticleTrain Day brought out the Chief’s supportershttp://www.hcn.org/wotr/train-day-brought-out-the-chiefs-supporters
A baker's dozen of us from central Colorado boarded the Amtrak Southwest Chief May 10. We were celebrating National Train Day, so called because back in 1869, a Golden Spike was pounded into a railroad tie, finally linking East and West Coasts by railroad. Lots of Americans still like to link up by train; on Train Day, railroad fans from Kansas and Colorado came to ride the famous – and endangered – Chief that links Chicago with Los Angeles.

The Chief is endangered because the U.S. House of Representatives continues to threaten Amtrak’s funding, calling it “a subsidy.” Maybe that's because Amtrak’s funding is a stand-alone line item while airlines, ships and automobiles enjoy support that is buried deep in the budget. The fact is that railroad passengers pay a greater percentage of their ticket price than do users of any other mode of travel -- 86.5 percent.

The Chief also finds itself endangered because of the BNSF railroad, which rents its tracks to the Chief. The railroad, once called the Burlington Northern Santa Fe, says it intends to drop passenger train maintenance on the line through Kansas, Colorado and New Mexico in two years, unless its Amtrak funding is increased.

What we learned on Train Day was that there's huge public support in the West for passenger trains, especially for the Southwest Chief. During the short leg from Trinidad, Colorado, to Las Vegas, New Mexico, we happily waved signs saying “Save the Chief” at each stop and won thumbs-up in return. A friend who attended Train Day at the (mostly) refurbished and reopened Union Station in Denver called to say that a big crowd had gathered there to send off the California Zephyr. We also learned that trips on the Empire Builder through Montana, North Dakota and Washington have been selling out almost every day.

Train gossip moves fast up and down the line, and at Flagstaff, Arizona, surprised tour group members got out of their sleepers to find themselves greeted by a bunch of “Save the Chief” demonstrators. Cellphones were buzzing and we also heard that the lovely old restored Union Station in Los Angeles had quite a contingent on hand. The Chief has been running between L.A. and Chicago every day since 1938, and enthusiastic riders want to keep it on track.

Among the supporters who greeted us were the mayors of the towns of La Junta, Lamar and Trinidad in southern Colorado, as well as the mayor of Las Vegas, New Mexico. The Chief is these towns’ only form of public transit, and they make good use of it. Several folks were there to advocate for a Chief stop in Pueblo, Colorado, and Santa Fe, New Mexico, and some reminded us that tourism flows there on the Chief via the Lamy station.

The biggest crowd was at Raton, New Mexico, where over a hundred people on the platform waved “Save the Chief” placards. They’d invited a Western band, gave out Popsicles, and got half the train outside to join them on the platform. A couple of the costumes there were notable, including a train-riding Santa Claus, and a gun-totin' “train mama.” When we pulled into Raton on our way back to Trinidad that afternoon, they still were there; some a bit wobbly, but still cheering.

The mayors reminded us that a $15 million “Tiger grant” has been applied for from the U.S. Department of Transportation. It would upgrade some 60 miles of track to keep up 80 mph passenger train standards. So far, $250,000 in matching funds has been raised by 10 small communities along the line, and in Trinidad, a town of 10,000, the construction of a passenger station is going forward. Other good signs abound. Colorado has just passed a bill setting up a commission to work with Kansas and New Mexico to find a way to help save the Chief, and both the state of Kansas and BNSF have pledged support toward the grant.

The popular Chief is nearly full most days, yet passengers don't seem to mind the waiting list for the dining car, and the bar/observation car does a good business. Trains seem to inspire diehard loyalty in those who use them, and once again National Train Day brought out their faithful, enthusiastic fans. The rolling party on the Chief wasn't bad either. All aboard!

Forrest Whitman is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a column syndication service of High Country News. He lives in a retired caboose in central Colorado.

]]>No publisherCommunitiesWriters on the Range2014/05/22 04:00:00 GMT-6ArticleA word from the grassrootshttp://www.hcn.org/wotr/a-word-from-the-grassroots
Talking frankly with neighbors at my precinct caucus.
This year, the precinct caucuses -- those grassroots exercises in democracy -- were held on the night of Mardi Gras. Go figure. All around Colorado, bars and bands were buzzing, but a few folks went to their precinct caucus and missed the party for their party.

Every Western state has some form of political party meetings, but some critics see them as a pointless exercise. The Koch brothers, for instance, simply spend a few casual millions to elect the kind of “right thinkers” they love. Some Wall Street bankers will throw in a million now and then, too, and their money talks. At our precinct caucus, we may have raised all of $500 for candidates, though as a bonus the homemade cookies were great. Thirty-six of us got to talk about everything from a woman having the right to control her own body to the government finding alternatives to jail sentences. I came away from my caucus this week thinking it was worth our time, though the system needs some changes to work even better.

Right now, three things are needed for a precinct caucus: a roll of Scotch tape of the no-stick variety, a fair amount of patience, and a nonjudgmental attitude. You might know your neighbors, but you never know where people are coming from. This year a man came to our Democratic Party caucus wearing a big button that proclaimed “Christian.” Some of us were sure we were in for a lecture about how evil Democrats are, supporting gay rights and abortion, but I was surprised to hear him say: “Jesus would have voted for everything we did tonight.”

About that no-stick tape: Finding a caucus site can be tricky. Public schools often insist that you hire one of their janitors to be present. This must be to guarantee that rowdy Democrats don't get drunk and trash the place while filling out endless caucus reports. Janitors hate the fact that you have to post a caucus sign on their nice glass doors.

This time, I learned not to judge the janitor, who told us we were “the nicest group who cleans up well.” He said he didn't even mind scrubbing the front door “for your guys.” So much for stereotypes.

Patience is just as important as a nonjudgmental attitude. Just before caucus day, I opened the local paper to see that our advertisement for the precinct caucuses was indeed run. Unfortunately, the ad was from two years ago.

Even more patience is needed to enable the people new to the process to figure out what precinct they live in. The caucus system is based on the days when you hitched up a horse and buggy to get to one. It's been suggested that the whole precinct thing be dropped in favor of larger “catchment areas.” Any marketing company can tell a county clerk where those catchments are and how far people will drive to get to a given location. So, critics say, the precinct system is inefficient and could go. Besides, it's easy for a few people from any organized group to dominate a precinct. Can you say “Tea Party”?

Once everyone found the right precinct last week -- and the cookies were passed around again -- we got down to building a party platform, plank by plank. A sampling of comments afterward: “I laughed when we put in that plank urging the governor to set up UFO landing areas.” Someone else added, “Of course, that won't last at the County Assembly, but politics is so deadly serious.” We also passed planks calling for more alternatives than jail for lawbreakers, raising the minimum wage, and slowing climate change by burning less fossil fuel.

One attendee said she was frustrated: “We get together here and try to find some facts in the tornado of misinformation blown at us by all those spook agencies.” Another declared, “If we’re not for trout, why be here?” We all had opinions that could be labeled “strong,” but we also seemed able to listen to other people’s point of view, at least for the duration of the meeting,

Talking about the direction our country was going in and what we cared about was a good experience, and I think the platform planks we came up with were pretty good. I continue to believe that something as grassroots as the caucus system needs to stay the way it is, small and intimate.

But don't forget the non-stick Scotch tape.

Forrest Whitman is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High Country News. He lives close to the Continental Divide in Colorado.

]]>No publisherPoliticsWriters on the Range2014/03/13 05:00:00 GMT-6ArticleNot all endangered species live in the foresthttp://www.hcn.org/wotr/not-all-endangered-species-live-in-the-forest
Struggling individuals in the rural West deserve as much support as needy wildlife.“You're reading a book about a grizzly bear with blood all over the cover?” That was the comment from one of my regular, and favorite, restaurant servers. I explained that I was reading Old Mose by James Perkins, a story about a huge and destructive grizzly that lived in the Old West. She perked up because, like most Westerners, she loves these old bear myths.

This particular bear story supposedly ended in 1904, when Wharton Pigg, a man who dedicated his life to killing Old Mose, went hunting with James Anthony, and Anthony shot the bear. But the book I was reading says it happened otherwise. The bear Pigg was forever pursuing was actually a grizzly sow. Anthony shot a different bear, though a darn big one.

The truth about Old Mose is different in a lot of ways from the legends that sprang up around him. He was blamed for going on rampages and killing thousands of cattle. The little colony of grizzles around Black Mountain was then doomed to be hunted to extinction. It was physically impossible for one grizzly to commit the many crimes Westerners blamed on the bear. No bear ever killed a thousand cattle. That's contrary to grizzly behavior anyway. Mostly the big bears eat roots, berries and dead animals. It's rare for them to take down a living animal.

Mose was also said to have killed a man, Jacob Ratliff, in 1883. Ratliff was killed by a bear, but he said it was a cinnamon bear, and Old Mose was a darker color.

In any case, my restaurant server won't have time to read the book. She says she tries to eke out time to read with her young child, but that's about it. Then she said something that stuck with me: “So, this bear was endangered -- kind of like us restaurant workers.”

She's dead right about being endangered. She barely gets along on the tough side of economic life, though she seems happy and is darn funny. Hers is a typical, small-town Western story. She did well in high school and then went to work in the ski and restaurant industry, putting off college. But she never got around to going to college, and then her child came along. Now she has “two and a half jobs.”

The small towns of the West depend on service workers just like her. And if you work at most restaurants, even chains like Olive Garden, Red Lobster and others, you're likely getting around $4 or $6 an hour and hoping for tips. The minimum wage for tipped workers is $2.13 an hour, believe it or not. Most of my buddies and I help out if we can by tipping 20 percent, but that's no solution.

My server acquaintance agrees that we all need to “get political” to help out endangered workers. But where would she find the time for that? She is well aware that she depends on government programs for survival. The federal Women, Infants and Children program, or WIC, helped out after her child was born. These days, she relies on the hot lunch program at school, where her kid actually likes the food, thank heavens. Food stamps are a huge help, too, she says. But as she well knows, all of those programs are on the chopping block in Washington. Blame that on the Tea Party Republicans, along with the odd reactionary Democrats and the scaredy-cats of both parties. The bottom line: This young worker’s survival is as much at risk as the old bears were, and she may be as endangered as today’s remnant bruins are.

What happened to the grizzlies is no mystery: Their food source disappeared. That occurred when ranchers started grazing cattle in the high meadows. Bears, wolves -- all kinds of predators -- were shot or poisoned. What's happening to our Western servers is no mystery, either. They are being squeezed hard right now by increasing rents and food costs. Legislative help is unlikely. Attempts to raise the wage for tipped workers run up against powerful restaurateur interests. The programs my friend depends on shrink each year.

But any help here in the small-town West is going to have to come from my side of the lunch counter. We need to get busy and elect politicians who understand what it's like to be endangered, both for critters and for people like my server and her kid.

Forrest Whitman is a contributor to Writers on the Range, an op ed service of High Country News. He lives in a retired caboose in the Rocky Mountains not far from Denver.

]]>No publisherCommunitiesWriters on the Range2013/10/24 05:00:00 GMT-6ArticleGold, guns, and suckers born every minutehttp://www.hcn.org/wotr/gold-guns-and-suckers-born-every-minute
With the right kind of marketing any unsound idea can flourish in the West.

I was sitting in the Elk's Club bar in Central City, Colo., when a young prospector pulled out a number of documents about how to open old gold mines. Included was a summary of Peter McFarlane's book from the 1920s, Grown Gold, now out of print. I warned him about a woman I know well who was badly injured recently while trying to re-open a gold mine. She'd read some of this same stuff. The book’s hypothesis was a lot more popular almost 100 years ago, but its notion remains attractive.

Gold mines have often been closed down and then re-opened after a couple of decades. But McFarlane had noticed that some mines that had been closed for 20 or 30 years held “blossom rock” on outcrops or ledges, sitting right out there in plain sight, and that some of that rock held small amounts of gold. McFarlane was in the gold-mining business all his life and knew his stuff. He was also a solid citizen credited with saving the Central City opera house and designing a top-notch gold stamp mill among other accomplishments. No fly-by-night boomer, he.

McFarlane simply could not imagine how any miners would miss such obvious gold in plain sight as they closed up a mine. So his hypothesis was that oxygen, once introduced into galleries closed for millennia, plus some mineralized water, allowed for the actual growth of gold. Of course there's no scientific proof for his hypothesis that the gold grows back, but that never stopped anybody from believing it -- or selling claims based on it. And sometimes he found enough gold in an old mine to make the idea of buying a “played out” claim seem a lot less silly to the people who bought his book. Gullibility is quite a part of our Western mine heritage.

Gullibility is part of the Western heritage in other ways, too. For example, it is widely believed that universal background checks do nothing to halt gun violence. That idea is drummed into the Western consciousness regularly by pro-gun groups like the National Rifle Association. If you take a look at any of the gun-rights websites, you will be amazed at the vitriol directed at the idea of universal background checks.

Yet, any county sheriff will tell you of cases where a background check stopped a gun sale and probably saved a life. One case I know about concerns a man who tended to beat up his wife. She got a restraining order, and he made all kinds of threats about coming to get her. The day he tried to buy a handgun and got turned down he was furious. He then discovered who his friends were around town: Turned out he didn’t have any. No one would loan him a handgun and he moved away disappointed about not getting to shoot her.

“Gun rights” websites will tell you that only an armed citizenry can stand up to the government. That's why the government (whatever that is) wants to take away our guns. Often, the United Nations is blamed for being in on the action. The idea that government wants my guns sounds paranoid to me, but it works to support the NRA and other groups, and it's being skillfully marketed.

In Colorado, two state legislators were recently recalled because they voted for gun-control bills that Gov. John Hickenlooper signed into law. Their successful recall is a first in the history of the state.

One of the strangest gun websites I found warns that the minds of legislators are being taken over by lizard people. This is the theory of David Icke, a British science writer and workshop leader. He's found evidence that primitive reptile beings lead happy lives deep in the earth and are quite sophisticated at the art of mind control. Only armed citizens, he says, can stop them. Some 12 million Americans subscribe to Icke's lizard-people hypothesis. It says so right there on his website.

With the right kind of marketing any unsound idea can flourish in the West. It's always been that way. So those of us who can still think past the marketing of dubious ideas have a duty. There are legislators who deserve our support. They're the ones the lizard people haven't gotten to yet.

Forrest Whitman is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High Country News. He lives in an old caboose in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado not too far from Denver.

]]>No publisherEnergy & IndustryWriters on the Range2013/09/18 05:00:00 GMT-6ArticleOur Western heartland train is endangeredhttp://www.hcn.org/wotr/our-western-heartland-train-is-endangered
In defense of the historic Southwest Chief.No train captures the heart of the Westerner like the Southwest Chief, as much a Western icon as the cattle roundup. It's been running between Los Angeles and Chicago for over a century, and it's popular: 354,912 passengers during the last fiscal year alone, and the number is estimated to be up by 8 percent this year.

Unfortunately, it's in danger of losing its most historic and important stops, including La Junta, Colo., Santa Fe and Albuquerque, N.M., and others. That's because in some places the Chief runs on Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad tracks that BNSF no longer uses.

At one time, the governor of New Mexico, then Bill Richardson, and two Colorado governors made noises of support for the route. We're not hearing as much support today. The Burlington Northern would be happy to keep running the traditional Chief route but runs no freight there anymore. The company needs significant money from Amtrak, or the three states of Colorado, New Mexico and Kansas to keep the track upgraded and in good shape. If it had to move the Chief to its current main line though Amarillo, Texas, we'd lose more than train service. We'd lose part of our history.

Formerly run by the Santa Fe R.R., and now by Amtrak, the Chief inspired some legendary Western amenities. The Harvey House hotels and restaurants captured the tourist in all of us. Their elegant Santa Fe style was designed by Mary Colter, whose Mimbrero china and other designs were everywhere in the Harvey Houses. That's not to mention the Harvey Girls, who gave a new name to service. Some of that magic remains at La Fonda in Santa Fe, La Posada in Winslow, Ariz., and El Tovar at the Grand Canyon.

The Chief has been called “the train of the stars.” At least a dozen movies were filmed on and around the Chief. That started with Judy Garland and Ray Bolger in 1946, and included "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" and other Westerns such as "The 3:10 to Yuma." The only movie completely filmed on a train was on the Chief: "3 For Bedroom 3," starring Gloria Swanson. The Chief shows up in all of those movies, as well as in lots of trackside scenes along the line, such as Lamy and Gallup in New Mexico. I took a short trip on the Southwest Chief recently, and thought a lot about Western history on the way.

As the May rain, mixed with snow, beat on the observation car window, I sipped my drink and thought about the Old Spanish Trail we were following. I imagined 300 years of traders, cattlemen, outlaws and Indians all following what's now the train’s road bed. When we reached the top of Raton Pass, we slowed for Wooton. That's named for Uncle Billy Wooton, the man responsible for the Santa Fe winning the railroad war with the Denver and Rio Grande Western over who got to use the pass.

My trip was from Trinidad, Colo., to Lamy, N.M., where you catch a shuttle to Santa Fe. That's just a little part of the line. The Southwest Chief begins its 2,256-mile trip in Los Angeles running over what was the Santa Fe R.R. every day. Get on at Union Station in Los Angeles at 6:15 p.m., and you can imagine Harry Truman or Clark Gable rushing to check in under those old Spanish-style arches. When you get off in Chicago's Dearborn Street station, you'll have truly seen the West.

When we detrained in Trinidad, Colo., we were met with a fun demonstration. It was national train day and lots of members of ColoRail, Colorado Rail Passenger's Association, were on hand with signs and songs. Trinidad, like many towns along the route, depends on the Chief for transportation.

If we want to keep the Chief on track, we need to call on our governors and legislators. Federal spending on rail travel is a tiny drop in the bucket. Airports got $26 billion last year, highways got $43 billion, but rail got only $1.6 billion. In Europe, those figures would be just the opposite. Colorado, New Mexico and Kansas need to consider infrastructure loans, grants, or adequate funding for the Chief. In the meantime, take a ride on the Chief. It's a basic Western experience. All aboard!

Forrest Whitman is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High Country News. He lives and writes in a restored caboose in Colorado.

]]>No publisherGrowth & SustainabilityWriters on the Range2013/08/07 05:00:00 GMT-6ArticleLiving in a caboose, supporting the railroadhttp://www.hcn.org/wotr/living-in-a-caboose-supporting-the-railroad
A man who lives in a train urges us to advocate for a robust regional rail network.I've lived for close on 20 years in an old heavyweight Burlington Railroad caboose. It's grounded in Gilpin County, Colo., close to the Continental Divide, near milepost 41.77 on the Union Pacific Railroad’s Moffat tunnel sub --a subsidiary line leading up to the tunnel and through it.

I may have slept in that old baby back when I was a brakeman on the Burlington Railroad. Over the years, life in the old caboose has brought snow up to my butt and coal blowing into my bunk, and more than once the regular 100-mile-an-hour winds have blown out a cupola window or two. Still, a caboose is always been a good place to get lost in railroad visions and dreams. I can't help but think of rail travel whenever I hear a freight crew just miss making the joint as the engine signals back and forth. I can't help but think about the future of Amtrak when the California Zephyr shrieks on by, usually running on time these days.

Ed Quillen, who sadly caught the westbound last year, said my caboose was a great place to imagine a future for Western rail. What a guy he was! Ed is the only buddy of mine who'd ever rouse from his bunk in the middle of the night in my caboose. Even after closing down the Stage Stop Bar, he'd pet my black lab, Gus, and stoke up the stove at 4 a.m. You've got to listen to an ink slinger like that.

He was right about the Western rail vision and the present dangers it faces, too. A big one is coming up: Rail cars still have to push over Raton Pass, just like in the old Santa Fe Railroad days, but major track work is needed all through Colorado and New Mexico. One of our best trains, Amtrak's Southwest Chief, depends on that rail. If it’s gone, there goes our train to Los Angeles, Chicago and every point in between.

Ed encouraged me to keep going to rail meetings. He was right, even though I felt we'd gotten nowhere working on the Colorado state rail plan, or plotting high-speed rail to Las Vegas or Tucson at those high-speed rail coalition meetings. Yet a number of factors favor a rail future for the entire West.

People, especially those under age 40, seem to like trains – or so they say on Facebook. Western state rail plans are being drawn up, and the feds have $10 billion bucks in budgeting authority for high-speed rail. President Obama and good old rail fan Joe Biden are back in office. California is building high-speed tracks rights now. Rail groups can take heart.

Ed wasn't always pleased with the planning results, of course. He argued that the old Rocky Mountain Rail Authority -- I was on the board then -- needed to switch out and change focus. All of our studies showed great passenger rail potential from Denver west -- on to Copper Mountain, Minturn and Salt Lake City. Ed agreed, but thought hauling those happy skiers could never be true high speed; not over a 4 percent grade and not till maglev -- high-speed, electromagnetically powered trains -- arrive. We'll see.

There are plenty of naysayers in Congress when it comes to Western rail, but there are some yea-sayers too. Meanwhile, our state rail-passenger groups have made some headway. Believe it or not, the newly redesigned Denver Union Station will have three tracks reserved for long-distance passenger trains. A fight from the Colorado Association of Rail Passengers and a lawsuit against the Union Station Authority threw that high stand switch. Those new passenger tracks will be in use this year.

Meanwhile, life in my caboose goes on. Mama bear checks in regularly and Gus the dog valiantly barks from inside the coal door to protect us. The coyotes howl and the big freights roll by. Soon, more passenger trains will be rolling under the big Western sky. Old Ed Quillen will look down, roll a ciggie and smile.

Forrest Whitman is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High Country News(hcn.org). He writes about rail matters and Colorado history while he watches trains and rides them, too.